The Pokemon Center--New York

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The Pokemon Center
New York

From Rockefeller Plaza; the Animatronic Pokeball on the 2nd floor can be seen clearly

ATMOSPHERE

“Understated” is not the word to use when describing the visual exhibits of the Pokémon Center. Even before you go through the entrance, you can’t but help notice the window showcases. The Animatronic display of actual-size Pokémon, on the W. 48th St. side of the building, includes a Diglett popping in and out of its hole, a Scizor with moving claws, and a wobbling Wobbuffet. The rest of the window display consists of plushes of varying sizes. Remember the Big Lapras and the Big Snorlax dolls from Gold/Silver/Crystal? Though their real-life counterparts (along with Big Entei, Big Suicune, Big Tyranitar…) are not THAT big, they certainly will not go unnoticed in your house - or on your credit card bill.

Large plastic Pokémon models are abundant; ten of them hover over the first floor, as part of the Pokémon Conveyor Belt on the ceiling. More models adorn the building columns on both floors, and the six starter Pokémon are displayed behind both cashier desks. There is also an Animatronic Pokéball in the ceiling on the second floor.

A projection screen on the first floor shows sequences of moving Pokémon, but that is almost invisible compared to the giant TV screen, which is what you notice first as you walk up the stairs. The TV screen shows clips from the first three movie shorts, Mewtwo Returns, and the 1st and 2nd English openings. Instead of the corresponding audio, however, music from the American CDs is piped through the speakers. For the sake of variety, someone should give the Anime Sound Collection OST to whoever is in charge of the playlist.

The employees are decked out in eye-catching gold baseball jerseys that have black pinstripes and “Pokémon” splashed across the front. Not surprisingly, their overall interest level in Pokémon is positive, ranging from mild to “I’ve got a L100 team for each day of the lunar cycle.” There are enough employees on hand to accommodate the crowds during weekday afternoons and weekends.

To the first floor!

Pocket Monsters was not created by me. It was created by Satoshi Tajiri and the crew at TV-Tokyo. Pokemon is (c) Game Freak, Nintendo, 4Kids Productions, Hasbro, Bandai, and a ton of other companies. When you have a popular anime like Pokemon, lots of people own it so it's impossible to list every company who owns a piece of Pokemon. No infringement of copyrights is meant by the creation of the web site. All images were gotten from official websites (Nintendo, TV-Tokyo, etc.) unless otherwise noted (I don't steal images from other sites!).